I’m with David and nexia. Try it. I think there is room for a site that groups social communities. For example, Meetup.com is a generic site that allows you to create a social gathering around say hiking. But once you join, you learn about gatherings around mountain biking. Because it’s likely that hikers may mountain-bike, by putting the two together you’ve added value. Putting them together makes it easier for people to find each other and interact. This is true with some sports sites as well. I could see that model working. Check out communityengine.org which uses Ruby. This is just a collection of communities based on the interests of the developer, but the concept could be expanded.
MU and Buddypress could get this stuff done but be prepared for extensive plugin development. If you have funding, that shouldn’t be that bad.
As for the viability of the service, the model lately has been grow fast through viral exposure of a simple, free service. Once critical mass is achieved, anything is possible (or so the model suggests). Monetization is almost secondary, so you need deep pockets (particularly to take on media). Protection from competition is based on size, installed user base and acquisition of content (e.g. videos).
I’d say go for it, but start with maybe 3 networks. I’m using Buddypress because I have background in PHP/MySQL and I don’t want to use Rails, but you might consider communityengine or something similar if you don’t care.
I’m no guru, so I hope someone else comes along to help more. However, what Justin indicated in his post should work for BP just like WP. In fact the “role” is created in WP through Members Plugin anyway.
I would play with echoing the member role name (assuming you’ve assigned one). Once that is echoed, you should be able to use a function based off the thread to assign a ‘$role’.’.png’ file for the icon. It shouldn’t matter that it’s the profile page unless there is a loop problem with that page.
If you have an appropriate development environment, Justin will probably help you get the Members plugin to echo the role on a WP page , but he’s not a BP guru, so you may be back here for the second step.
You should make it a plugin, then add this to the plugin and activate. If you’d like to see a working implementation then check out these plugins:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-group-twitter
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-groupblog
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-group-blogs
You should be saving extra group information as groupmeta:
bp_groups_update_groupmeta( $group_id, 'name', $value );
Check this thread in Plugins forum https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/buddypress-contents-10-plugin-released-tags-categories-in-bp
Burt is MIA and there are other users who have at least done some updating.
There doesn’t seem to be a clear line between creating/extending and plugins so searching forums is key.
I’ll again put in a plug for BPCONTENTS going core.
OK, I know adding this to core might be a big project to take on, but it seems that if BP and WP are really going to be flexible CMS’s, this kind of functionality is needed.
Custom post types, member types, group types and blog types.
It seems crazy that most sites would want to moderate anyone getting a blog or starting a group about anything. What I hate about some of the ning sites I see is duplicative groups and groups about nothing. Poor quality blog posts everywhere. Not a good user experience if you ask me.
I’m nowhere near good enough to take this on, but it’s needed. For example, I need different member levels (e.g. teacher, principal, student) with different “rights.” Different group types (e.g. classroom, school, extracurricular). Different blog types (e.g. homework, school news, dances/parties). Students shouldn’t be able to create school groups and teachers shouldn’t create blogs on parties/dances. Something like Justin Tadlock’s Members Plugin could be used to manage rights of specific content types including the content type user/member.
BPCONTENTS was/is a step on this direction that should be available for all well organized social networking sites. The fact that Facebook doesn’t allow different levels of “friend” access is problematic and BP should do better. I hope this gets on the roadmap list or at least as a supported plugin.
[. . . stepping off of soapbox ]
Yes, I’m having same problem in WPMU 2.8.4a and buddypress 1.1.3. Looks like this might have been addressed once at beginning of year (https://trac.buddypress.org/changeset/1083), but it’s cropped up again?
Moderators: should we post as bug?
I hope you get somewhere on this. I want Buddypress, but not MU. No choice at the moment, but I’ll only have one blog. I am thinking of guest authors, but not separate blogs. I am thinking of a way to use points or achievements as a way to access the ability to blog. That will save me some moderation time I hope. Without this solution, I plan to have to moderate initial posts to see if I want the authors content. Probably need to do that anyway in the beginning, but with growth, I’d like to relax that restriction.
Wow, those ajax functions must make that server nuts..
Am I allowed to copy this theme and make it a buddypress theme? 
I tried resaving it … I’m not sure where the ‘change to previous’ option is. Does it make a difference that I’m using the subdomain option to load the blogs?
I’m just finishing up a post on how to do backups.
“I thought about the index.html as well, but that would still make people loose their posts they are editing when upgrade is taken place (or is failing), wouldn’t it?”
Hopefully you’ll have booted them out & warned them. Don’t upgrade on the middle of a Thursday, for instance. First thing Monday morning, early on a Saturday – those are times I pick, though I also have the advantage of being in an earlier timezone than my users.
“So you also do not (even) deactivate the BP-plugins?”
I mostly do MU sites, but yeah. I’d just keep on going… (Do the instructions say to deactivate it? I can’t say I ever looked…)
I tyr the auto-upgrades first, and then if needed (or if it’s a big upgrade) I do it manually. Much safer.
“By the way, myself and some others had a white screen of death last upgrade. Not just just main blog, but all blogs, the moment I clicked the de-activate BuddyPress button. Apparently this could have been prevented by switching theme first”
Yep. the theme is looking for BP and you turned it off. Kind of predictable, really.
I did a post here about backups, mostly via ssh, if someone wants to give it a read-over.
http://wpmututorials.com/basics/how-to-backup-wpmu/
Thanks Andrea. Sorry I have ‘inspired’ you do make a blogpost, but yes, it has become inevitable now
I agree with the notice, better to let people know. I thought about the index.html as well, but that would still make people loose their posts they are editing when upgrade is taken place (or is failing), wouldn’t it? have you ever tried the automated upgrade?
>Some of us with large sites do not deactivate all plugins and then reactivate later. With hundreds or thousands of blogs, it’d be a nightmare.
So you also do not (even) deactivate the BP-plugins?
>The moving of the theme only occurred during BP 1.1. Shouldn’t have to do it next time.
It is still in the upgrade instructions though and I assume that if there are theme changes this might make sense or not? I do hope somebody cleverer than me could make this process automated as well.
By the way, myself and some others had a white screen of death last upgrade. Not just just main blog, but all blogs, the moment I clicked the de-activate BuddyPress button. Apparently this could have been prevented by switching theme first. At that time I was not using a cloned child theme (now I am), so maybe that caused it.
Just shooting some ideas for your upcoming post 
Cheers, Harry
This is nothing but an white space issue.
Check for the white spaces after closing tags of php(that may be on different line than the 3).
best bet ,disable all other plugins except buddypress ,if the error is there,It is because you have got white spaces in your header.php
Hope,that should help.
Achievements coming out this weekend. Just going to see if I can get some translations done first. Mainly a compatibility release with current BuddyPress and a few changes to admin interface. Plan is to get another version out just after BP 1.2 with more changes.
@Andrea and @JJJ, thanks for the suggestions, I’ll play around with the permissions but I suspect that’s not it, simply because it hasn’t been a problem when uploading the stable version of BP in near identical circumstances. Also, yes, other plugin do appear and can be activated.
Getting an install up and running with trunk would be useful in giving me a headstart on working out how close that version of BP will be to doing what I need, but it is not an absolute necessity.
Actually, at this stage, I probably need to bit the bullet and do a regular SVN install like everyone else – if it turns out that using that route solves the problem, I will post here to tell others who might run into the same problem.
That’s because there is no buddypress theme for your users blogs, they just take the standard wordpress theme, just like when you would make a WPSA install.
just try to re save it , or if does not work,change->save->change to previous->save.
Well the blog is set to use day and name as the permalink. Does that need to be switched to something different? It is set to how I used it before.
Did you try updating the Permalink structure?
Thanks for the great advice. I will def incorporate an IDE in the future; that sounds like a great idea. I guess you understand where im at with wordpress mu and buddypress. Im just trying to grasp how this thing works
Or possible the ownership of the bp plugin folder – that’ll hide it.
To be honest, there really isn’t one, at least not on paper. I can’t say that WordPress has one either.
It isn’t really about how the pieces fit, as much as it’s about how you adapt them to fit your needs. This is similar to WordPress, where it started as blogging software but people bend it around backwards to work in other ways.
Without sounding too much like a broken record, the about page sums up almost all of the functionalities of BP; none of them are more important than the others. It’s up to a good theme designer and code slinger to bring those components out and emphasize their importance to a community website.
Out of the box, BuddyPress is designed for all elements to be created equal. Groups are no more important than friends are no more important than activity are no more important than forums are no more important than directories are no more important than… You get the idea… It’s up to a good theme designer and a great developer to make the functions of BuddyPress pop-out and turn a WordPress site into a meetup.com or linkedin.com.
All of the elements exist in the core and in external plugins to do it, it just has yet to be done.
Donnacha, maybe check permissions on the plugins directory? Do any other plugins appear in the plugins screen?
